Two huge eucalyptus trees rise high outside
my living room window.
The hillside around them is my cat Nobiya’s
favorite place to explore.
I take him out for walks every morning, and he teaches me the fine art of watching.
He runs down the stairwell, stops, sniffs
the air, looks around, pauses.
Then usually he makes his way up a short
concrete stairway to the hillside shaded by the trees and covered with strips of
bark they shed like cat’s fur—bits of it everywhere.
Their roots are shallow and extensive,
curving up and around, protruding out of the earth at odd angles.
This morning
Nobiya lies in the curve of the exposed
shallow root of the eucalyptus tree.
He stretches out and sharpens his
claws--
His body a perfect curve
Aligned to the root.
He jumps up, looks about,
Finds another root and stretches out
upon it like a ledge--
The root’s been roughly cut and
rises up out of the ground a jagged edge--
His body fits it perfectly. He
sharpens his claws.
Tail swishing, he seeks out grass to
nibble
Bird trills
Lizard still, frozen on another root
of another tree
Nobiya makes his way there
Sniffs the air
Settles down on the earth in the
crook of a root,
Alert, looking, watching, waiting for
something to move, to shift,
Everything charged and worthy of
attention every moment,
From the shade of the eucalyptus tree,
Nobiya watches.
Two lizards appear on cement blocks in the sun.
They are still.
Watching without looking.
Nobiya doesn't move, except for the twitching of
his tail, which never stops.
Watching without looking.
One lizard starts doing pushups—a
lizard cobra pose--then darts away to another block,
does more push-ups, darts away--
Nobiya's tail is still.
His head turns one way, then
another.
The yogi lizard reappears on blocks
a few feet away, does pushups, disappears.
Meditating lizard doesn't move.
